The cumulative effect of research has qualified the drama of The Strange Death of Liberal England, although a sense of uniqueness still remains. The years between 1886 and 1914 still seem remarkable for the self-conscious assessment of principles and the reformulation of convictions and ideas experienced and recorded by so many of the personalities involved. The atmosphere of doubt and uncertainty which Dangerfield described so vividly, surely is an important factor in its own right, and ought to be so considered in analysing the replacement of older certainties by new and awkward questions. In particular, the accumulation of purely empirical evidence has obscured the significance of the theoretical debate upon the rights and duties of the individual in society and the relationship of the government to the individual; and it was the theoretical arguments which were also important in affecting the course of politics at Westminster.

There is a temptation to impose a false simplicity upon the period. Sometimes, for example the period appears to hold no more than a contrast in inevitabilities, the rise of Labour and the decline of Liberalism. Or the Liberal party may appear as a fading anachronism; its principles of individualism outmoded, its policies dictated by electoral exigencies, its leadership a coincidental assemblage of personalities lacking the internal coherency necessary to link supporters, values and goals together within a national organisation.